3 scientists share Physics Nobel

STOCKHOLM (Sweden): Two Japanese scientists and a Tokyo-born American shared the 2008 Nobel Prize for physics for discoveries in sub-atomic particles, the prize committee said on Tuesday.   

The Nobel committee lauded Yoichiro Nambu, a Tokyo-born American citizen, and Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa of Japan for separate work that helped explain why the universe is made up mostly of matter and not anti-matter via processes known as broken symmetries.   

They helped figure out the existence and behaviour of the very tiniest particles known as quarks.   

Kobayashi said the news came as a shock. “It is my great honour and I can’t believe this,” he said. But Maskawa said he was not surprised.